Israel: Arab Citizens

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and I want to pick up on his last point at the end of my speech. However, I begin by thanking the right reverend Prelate for introducing this debate so comprehensively. I am often under attack by some of my Palestinian friends for being a paid-up member of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel. I want to make it clear to them and to the House that there is a clear distinction between being a friend of Israel, which I am, and a friend of the present Government of Israel, which I am certainly not. That is an important distinction which we ought to keep in mind throughout the debate.

My experience of the area goes back to when I was a very young MP. In 1967 I happened to be with a parliamentary delegation to the General Assembly of the United Nations. I remember with pleasure the spirit of optimism in the British delegation. Lord Caradon was the British representative and a key figure in the formulation of UN Resolution 242, which was supposed to be the basis for peace in that part of the world. However, it is a very sad fact that the optimistic mood of 45 years ago has disappeared.

After I became the leader of the Liberal Party, I took a delegation around the Middle East to see for myself what the situation was on the ground. We went to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt and were received by the heads of government of all those countries. Four of us wrote a report while sitting in the garden of the embassy in Cairo. The report bears examination today because it was a prelude to the two-state solution. The only member of that group who is still with us is the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool. But on that visit there was one head of government who did not meet us, and that was the Prime Minister of Israel. Why was that? It was because we had talked to Yasser Arafat in Damascus. Our colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, was the young ambassador in Syria at the time, and in those days no British Minister would talk to a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation because it was a terrorist organisation. Officials could talk to its representatives, but I was the first party leader to talk to Yasser Arafat, whom I met over many years. I had great regard for his capacity as the leader of the PLO, but as the head of the administration, he was an absolute disaster—although that is another story. But not talking to the PLO was simply daft. Today we have come full circle because we do not talk to representatives of Hamas. Why is that? It is even worse now because, although like Arafat at that time, Hamas does not recognise Israel, it has actually been elected in Gaza. We do not like it, but Hamas is there. I do not see any point in continuing a policy of failing to speak to its representatives.

Against that background, it is not surprising that we have seen the appalling launching of rockets against the southern part of Israel, where I have also been. I feel great sympathy for what the population has had to endure. But there is no substitute for talking to people with whom you disagree. The latest threat from the Netanyahu Government to create 3,000 new settlement residences on the West Bank has sounded for the first time a long overdue note of alarm from our own Foreign Office. As described, these settlements would isolate Ramallah and Bethlehem from East Jerusalem and from each other, and would make a complete mockery of any possibility of the two-state solution. That should be deeply alarming not just to this House and the Foreign Office, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has just said, it ought to be of deep concern to the United States, a keen supporter of Israel, as well.

The right reverend Prelate gave us many statistics to illustrate the discrimination between Jewish and Arab citizens in Israel. These statistics are agonisingly familiar to those of us who have followed events in South Africa over many years. Because of my background as a boy in Africa, I was always a keen member of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. During my time as president of that movement I visited South Africa a great deal. One thing that strikes me is the comparison between what is happening to the Arab citizens of Israel today and what happened to the non-white citizens of South Africa then. For example, the resettlement of some Arab citizens from Jerusalem to the West Bank is reminiscent of the Group Areas Act of the apartheid regime. The separate roads in the West Bank used by Israelis and Palestinians to travel are a reminder of the public transport arrangements in apartheid South Africa. What I remember now but which did not strike me at the time concerns the work I did for the AAM with people in South Africa and over here. When one looks at the names of friends of mine from that time—Helen Suzman and Zach de Beer, and others who were not Liberals but perhaps members of the South African Communist Party such as Ruth First, Joe Slovo, Hilda Bernstein, Helen Josephs, Albie Sachs and Ronnie Kasrils—the extraordinary thing was that the leadership of the white resistance to apartheid came from the Jewish community. Why was that? It was because in the decades after the Holocaust there was a deep-seated revulsion against any idea of racial superiority. That is what the right reverend Prelate reminded us of in his remarks. The founding charter of Israel is quite clear on the issue and the present Government have departed very far from it.

I am not naive enough to think that if there was a settlement between Israel and Palestine, international terrorism would disappear, but there is no doubt in my mind that our failure to deal properly and independently with this dispute is breeding Islamic extremism and terrorism around the world. I would therefore argue that it is in our own interests to adopt a far more equable policy.

I want to end on an optimistic note. A couple of weeks ago some of us attended a meeting upstairs with a group of Israeli businessmen who have formed the Israeli Peace Initiative to mirror the Arab Peace Initiative. That is a hopeful sign. They are not politicians but businessmen in Israel who are fed up with the intransigence of their own politicians and who are promoting peace with the Arab world. It is in that context that the end of discrimination against Arab citizens can become a real possibility. I shall finish by making the same point as that made by the noble Lord, Lord Warner. I believe that as long as Israel consistently flouts international law, it is quite wrong that we in Europe should maintain a beneficial trade association with a country that is behaving in this way. We have got leverage and it is time that we used it.